In the Forward’s opinion section, you’ll find analysis and essays from diverse corners of the Jewish world.
To pitch an opinion piece, email our Opinion Editor, Talya Zax.
Opinion
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Letters
Letter | Batya Ungar-Sargon’s Attack On BDS Is Inaccurate And Harmful
Dear Editor, Batya Ungar-Sargon’s unsubstantiated comments about supporters of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) — the Palestinian civil society call to hold Israel accountable to basic principles of human rights and international law — deserve a response. While rightly saying that anti-BDS legislation should be opposed, much of her article recklessly slams BDS activists and…
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Opinion Birthright Alumni Reflect On The New Trip Guidelines
Last summer, 13 activists staged dramatic walkouts from their Birthright trips. To prevent more, Birthright added a clause to their Code of Conduct, that participants commit not to “highjack” discussion by turning it toward the occupation. Last week, they made good on the new contract when several Americans were kicked off their Birthright program for…
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Opinion Of Course Birthright Is One-Sided. That’s What Makes It Great.
In 1987, my Jewish day school wanted me to experience what it means to be Israeli, to appreciate the labor of the Zionist pioneers who had returned home after 2,000 years in exile to till the soil and live under the perpetual threat of violent Arabs out to destroy our Holy Land. So I spent…
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Opinion I Was Kicked Off Birthright For Asking Questions About The Occupation
On the fifth day of my Birthright trip, as we drove south from a Kibbutz up north to Tel Aviv, I asked our trip leader if the towering concrete wall I could see from my window was the wall that separates the West Bank from Israel. Two hours later, I stood on a street corner…
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Opinion Birthright Is Chasing Away Engaged Jews To Please Pro-Israel Hardliners
Picture the scene: A group of young American Jews, visiting Israel for the first time on Birthright, demand more education about the country and its politics, trying to realize an age-old Jewish ideal of sharp, open debate. They form new organizations and movements around Jewish political activism, and they form links with groups of Israeli…
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Opinion What Germany’s Prison System – And Its Nazi Past – Taught Me About Ours
This story was co-published with The Marshall Project. My grandfather, a rabbi in Louisiana, served as an Army chaplain during World War II. To the day he died, he couldn’t talk to us about what he saw. The atrocities he witnessed left him deeply scarred. To my surprise, a draft memoir I’d never known about…
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Opinion The Intellectual Dark Web’s Hypocrisy When It Comes To BDS
“Free speech is the fundamental principle of Western civilization.” These are the words of Jordan Peterson, who is perhaps the most prominent figure in what is referred to as the “Intellectual Dark Web” (IDW), a loose network of thinkers and commentators brought together by their opposition to progressive discourse on the left. In a gullible…
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Opinion Trump Tweeted His Way Out Of Syria. Will He Blindside Israel Too?
President Donald Trump’s abrupt decision to announce the withdrawal of 2,000 American personnel from Syria immediately provoked reactions comparing his approach to Syria to President Obama’s: “Mr. Trump’s view that American forces cannot alter the strategic balance in the Middle East, and should not be there, was fundamentally shared by his immediate predecessor, Barack Obama,”…
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Letters Sorry, Liberals: People Who Hate Israel Are Anti-Semites, Too
Jew-haters don’t care how Jews define anti-Semitism. The Nazis didn’t care if you were an Orthodox Jew or an assimilated Jew or anything in between. This would seem to be a powerful argument against defining anti-Semitism based on how you define your Jewish identity. Yet, in a recent op-ed, the Forward’s Opinion Editor Batya Ungar-Sargon…
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Opinion Congress Shouldn’t Take the Anti-BDS Bill Bait
A major bill affecting American civil liberties and U.S. foreign policy towards Israel is being debated behind the scenes in Congress and may be attached in the dark of night to the end of year Omnibus spending package. This bill – S. 720, the Israel Anti-Boycott Act (IABA) – is fundamentally flawed at its core…
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Opinion Alice Walker’s Conspiracy Theories Aren’t Just Anti-Semitic – They’re Anti-Black
Every generation that struggles against oppression stands on the shoulders of those who came before us. But even as we honor those who taught us, we must also challenge them when they stray from the path of fighting for justice, and fall into the trap of stigmatizing one community to uplift another. For Black feminists,…
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